XXXVII.
It is another summer evening, like that of four years ago, and Everet is again with Braine at the little cottage. He is impressed less with the sorrow than with the rugged strength of the man who rises from his flower-bed to greet him.
"Work is good for you," he says, scanning the face of his friend; "and the work is good, too. I did not believe it possible that the man of action, relinquishing action as you have done, could become a power as the man of thought. But you have wrought that miracle."
"The work is effective, then?"
"More. It is inspiring. Your printed words do not draw men to you as your eloquence did, and you take no personal part in directing human endeavor, but you are influencing others to action as you never did before, and instead of one great Edgar Braine, filling the eye of the public, we have thousands inspired by him to do his work for the betterment of the land and the time. My friend, I once tried to draw you from the solitude in which you were wasting yourself, as I supposed; I have no wish now to draw you from a seclusion in which you are doing a nobler work than in your most active days."
"Thank you, Everet—and thank God! I have atonement to make, you know, and it is encouraging to know that I am making it."
And so the two talk on of public matters, with no further reference to the more sensitive matters of personal feeling, until the clean boy has served the supper, and they have finished it. Then, as they sit together in the open air, Braine says:
"And now, Everet?"
Everet understands, and takes a preparatory long breath. He begins:
"I told you I had come from New York instead of Washington?"